Louise Upston

She also introduced replacement legislation for the Land Transfer Act 1952.

Louise Claire Upston (née McGill, born 14 March 1971) is a New Zealand politician.

She attended Rangitoto College, from which she graduated in 1988, and where she was friends with Amy Adams.

Since before the age of ten, she had wanted to become a member of parliament and intended to become a lawyer to further her political ambitions.

McGill began law school but did not achieve the minimum grades to enter the second year.

When her mother died, she dropped out of university at the age of 19 and instead founded a management consultancy firm, McGill Manning.

The firm provided event and project management services and its clients included Air New Zealand, Russell McVeagh, and Datacom Group.

She then studied at the Waikato Management School and graduated with a Master of Business Administration.

In the 1990s, McGill became a single mother to her first child.

She later described this experience as "the hardest time of my life."

She later married Craig Upston, with whom she had two more children.

Upston unsuccessfully sought a National Party candidacy in 2005.

She was elected as a Member of the New Zealand House of Representatives for Taupō, representing the National Party, in the 2008 general election.

She was Minister for Women and Minister of Corrections in the Fifth National Government.

Louise McGill was born in North Shore to parents Ian and Norma McGill.

The youngest of four children, she grew up in East Coast Bays.

She was selected as the party's electorate candidate in 2008 where she unseated Mark Burton, a Labour cabinet minister who had represented the area for 15 years.

Upston entered parliament at the beginning of the Fifth National Government.

In her first term, Upston was appointed to the local government and environment committee, the government administration committee, and the education and science committee.

She gave her maiden speech on 16 December 2008, where she stated her priorities were education and "making New Zealand safe again."

She received attention in the media for her comments on harsher sentences and sloganised approach to crime: "The police are good. The criminals are bad. It's that simple."

Eventually she would soften her views and state her support for investments in prisoner rehabilitation.

During the 2011 New Zealand general election, Upston retained Taupō by a margin of 14,115 votes, defeating Labour candidate Frances Campbell.

In her second term, Upston was appointed the government's junior whip.

They separated in 2012.

Upston lives in Karapiro.

Following the February 2013 Cabinet reshuffle, she became chief whip.

She was also a member of the Māori affairs committee and the local government and environment committee.

During the 2014 New Zealand general election, Upston retained Taupō by a margin of 15,406 votes, defeating Labour candidate Jamie Strange.

Upston was promoted into the executive after the 2014 election, as minister outside of Cabinet.

She was Minister for Land Information, Minister for Women, Associate Minister for Local Government, and Associate Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment from October 2014 until December 2016.

At the same time, she was a member of the justice and electoral select committee.

As Minister for Women, Upston addressed the 59th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women on 11 March 2015.

She used the speech to set out her goals in the portfolio, including supporting women in the workplace and preventing violence against women.

The following month, she attracted criticism for refusing to comment on women's rights in the workplace after it was revealed Prime Minister John Key was forced to apologise to a Parnell cafe worker for repeatedly pulling her hair.

She attracted further scrutiny in the portfolio for rejecting calls to remove GST on menstrual products and for refusing to comment on an incident involving the mistreatment of a stripper by Chiefs ruby players.

As Minister for Land Information, Upston oversaw the correction of several Māori placenames, including Whanganui and Waiotahe.

In the local government portfolio, she oversaw but later postponed a trial of online voting in the 2016 local elections.

She was also involved in governance reviews and the appointment of commissioners at Kaipara District Council and Canterbury Regional Council.

In the tertiary education, skills and employment portfolio, she had responsibility for industry training, private training establishments, and adult and community education.